PANAMA PAPERS, TAX EVASION OF THE HIGH SPHERES

Today, The Grandma is taking care of her investments. She has been reading about one of the greatest tax scandals, the Panama Papers, the leaked documents that detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities and were first published on a day like today in 2016.

The Panama Papers, in Spanish Papeles de Panamá, are 2.6TB of data or 11.5 million leaked documents that detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities leaked beginning on 3 April 2016.

The documents, some dating back to the 1970s, were created by, and taken from, former Panamanian law firm and corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca.

The documents contain personal financial information about wealthy individuals and public officials that had previously been kept private. 

While offshore business entities are legal, reporters found that some Mossack Fonseca shell corporations were used for illegal purposes, including fraud, tax evasion, and evading international sanctions.

John Doe, the whistleblower who leaked the documents to German journalist Bastian Obermayer from the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), remains anonymous, even to the journalists who worked on the investigation. My life is in danger, the whistleblower told them.

In a May 6, 2016 statement, John Doe cited income inequality as the reason for the action and said they leaked the documents simply because I understood enough about their contents to realize the scale of the injustices they described.

Doe added that they had never worked for any government or intelligence agency and expressed willingness to help prosecutors if granted immunity from prosecution. After SZ verified that the statement did in fact come from the source of the Panama Papers, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) posted the full document on its website.

More information: Süddeutsche Zeitung

SZ asked the ICIJ for help because of the amount of data involved. Journalists from 107 media organizations in 80 countries analysed documents detailing the operations of the law firm.

After more than a year of analysis, the first news stories were published on April 3, 2016, along with 150 of the documents themselves. The project represents an important milestone in the use of data journalism software tools and mobile collaboration.

The documents were dubbed the Panama Papers because of the country they were leaked from, but the Panamanian government expressed strong objections to the name over concerns that it would tarnish the government's and country's image worldwide, as did other entities in Panama and elsewhere. Some media outlets covering the story have used the name Mossack Fonseca papers.

In October 2020, German authorities issued an international arrest warrant for the two founders of the law firm at the core of the tax evasion scandal exposed by the Panama Papers. Cologne prosecutors are seeking German-born Jürgen Mossack and Panamanian Ramón Fonseca on charges of accessory to tax evasion and forming a criminal organization.

The leaked files identified 61 family members and associates of prime ministers, presidents and kings, including:

-the brother-in-law of China's paramount leader Xi Jinping

-the son of former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak

-children of former prime minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif

-children of Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev

-Clive Khulubuse Zuma, the nephew of former South African president Jacob Zuma

-Nurali Aliyev, the grandson of Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev

-Mounir Majidi, the personal secretary of Moroccan king Mohammed VI

-Kojo Annan, the son of former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan

-Mark Thatcher, the son of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher

-Juan Armando Hinojosa, the "favourite contractor" of Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto.

-Spanish Royal Family: Infanta Pilar, Duchess of Badajoz and her son Bruno Gómez-Acebes, Iñaki Urdangarín, Amalio de Marichalar, and people close to the family like the mistress of former King Juan Carlos I, Corinna Larsen.

More information: Europa

In tax havens,
boundaries between what’s legal and illegal become very blurred.
The recent leak on the Panama Papers revealed
how international leaders,
celebrities and businessmen from all over the world
were using offshore companies to avoid making their assets public and,
in some cases, potentially to dodge tax or hide illegal activities.
Panama is where criminal capitalism and legal capitalism become one.

Roberto Saviano